Straw Dogs (1971)

Straw Dogs is Sam Peckinpah’s most controversial film and in its day it was very controversial indeed. Modern audiences are likely to be far more shocked than 70s audiences.

This is a movie that immediately ignited a firestorm of controversy so that even in 1971 many critics and viewers approached it with preconceptions. They expected to be outraged. As a result they totally misunderstood the film and read things into it that are simply not there.

And there is of course Peckinpah’s reputation as an apostle of cinematic violence. In fact the violence in this movie only matters insofar as it has an impact on the emotional states of the characters. And Peckinpah goes out of his way to avoid presenting the violence as being in any way heroic or admirable or justified. This is a very anti-heroic movie. The violence is squalid and nasty and petty and disgusting and absurd. Peckinpah wants us to be horrified and disgusted. It’s not easy to present extreme violence without making it exciting but more than anyone other director who has tried doing this Peckinpah succeeds in making violence very very unattractive.

There is no hero in this movie. Despite what you may have heard this is not the story of a man pushed beyond endurance who finally overcomes his fears and fights back and becomes a righteous avenger.

David (Dustin Hoffman) and his wife Amy (Susan George) have taken up residence in a farmhouse in a village in Cornwall. David is a mathematician. As an American he is an outsider. Amy was born in the village. This is home to her. This is important.

David is a middle-class intellectual and like so many of that breed he despises anyone who isn’t a middle-class intellectual. He considers the locals to be barely human and they are immediately aware of this. He is also a coward and they are also immediately aware of this. He antagonises the locals. 

Peckinpah saw this movie as the story of a marriage. A failed marriage. Amy loves David but she knows that he despises her as an intellectual inferior. He is petty and vindictive. Amy also knows that he is a coward. The marriage is clearly heading for the rocks.

Right at the start the couple have an encounter with Charlie Venner (Del Henney). Charlie and David hate each on sight. Charlie and Amy have a history. The reason they broke up is one of the many things that Peckinpah keeps deliberately vague.

David has hired four young men from the village to repair the barn. Despite what you may have heard about the movie Amy is not flirtatious.

Then comes the infamous scene in which Charlie and one of the other men take Amy by force. The biggest controversy created by the movie is the allegation that Amy is shown to enjoy it. It’s much more complicated than that. She is already in emotional turmoil and now she is emotionally shattered. Yes, she may feel a momentary physical pleasure but it horrifies her and the whole experience is traumatic and devastating.

And then comes the most important scene in the film. David arrives home and she doesn’t tell him what has happened. This is crucial because it means that none of David’s later actions are motivated by a desire for revenge. She doesn’t tell him because she now feels so estranged from him that she doesn’t see the point. She assumes that if she tells him he will let her down again.

Three minor characters now become important. Henry Niles (David Warner) is suspected of having an unhealthy interest in the young village girls. Once again Peckinpah keeps things deliberately vague. Is Henry dangerous or just odd?

Tom Hedden (Peter Vaughan) is a drunken aggressive braggart. His daughter Janice (Sally Thomsett, a couple of years away from major TV stardom) is an incorrigible flirt. Janice and Henry Niles have gone off together and now no-one knows where they are. Tom reacts as if Janice is a mere child but clearly she isn’t. It would appear to be a case of an over-protective father refusing to admit that his daughter is no longer a child and pushing her into an act of rebellion.

In this movie the social breakdown is almost complete. Those whose duty it is to protect the vulnerable are ineffectual. The forces of law and order, represented by the magistrate Major Scott (T.P. McKenna) are impotent. Fathers fail their daughters, husbands fail their wives.

The story of Henry Niles will intersect with that of David and Amy.

Then comes the climax - the pitched battle at the farmhouse. But there’s nothing heroic about it. It’s just a mob of drunken louts led by Tom Heddon battling a crazy man. David does fight and fights viciously but Peckinpah undercuts any admiration we may feel for him. He is not a weakling who suddenly discovers reserves of courage and nobility. It’s just that his anger that has been festering inside him for years suddenly explodes. It’s a battle that is more farcical than heroic.

It’s worth pointing out that Peckinpah stated that he saw David as the villain of the movie. I have never been a fan of Dustin Hoffman but I must admit that in this movie he is perfect. He gets David’s twitchiness, his tendency to flinch at even the smallest hit of conflict, and he gets across his pettiness and his cruelty towards Amy. Susan George is even more impressive.

Peter Vaughan is outrageous but effective. David Warner has the right mix of creepiness and vulnerability. Sally Thomsett is excellent in what is actually a rather tricky and ambiguous role.

Mention must be made of the frenetic editing. A single very brief scene can include literally hundreds of cuts. Images succeed each other at dizzying speed. There are also wild camera angles and in almost every way Peckinpah is totally reinventing the language of cinema. This is a technically revolutionary film.

Straw Dogs is one of Peckinpah’s two best movies, the other being Junior Bonner. Both tend to be unjustly overshadowed by his more famous films. Straw Dogs is very highly recommended

Junior Bonner (1972)

Junior Bonner is a 1972 Sam Peckinpah movie and although it has a contemporary setting it is a western of sorts. It’s a movie about the West.

J.R. Bonner (Steve McQueen), known to his friends as Junior Bonner, is a rodeo star. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say was a rodeo star. Mc Queen was 41 when he made this film so he was the perfect age to play a cowboy who is getting too old for the rodeo game but just will not accept that reality.

He’s just been thrown by a really mean bull named Sunshine. He’s been thrown plenty of times before but he just doesn’t bounce back the way he used to. Everything hurts, and a week later everything still hurts. But at the next rodeo he’s fixed the draw so he gets Sunshine again. Most men would bribe the officials not to draw Sunshine but Junior pays to get him. He has to ride him. Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

Much of the film takes place during the Frontier Day celebrations in Prescott, Arizona but the frontier days are gone.  It’s a celebration of the past. The movie is an elegy to a West that is now just a draw for tourists. 

It’s also an elegy to an America that was passing into history. An America that has no room for cowboys. His brother Curly (Joe Don Baker) is in real estate. That’s the future. Mobile home villages, shopping malls, parking lots.

It’s interesting that the movie that made Peckinpah’s reputation, Ride the High Country (1962), is also about the passing of the Old West although it handles that theme differently.

Junior could take a job working for Curly, but Junior just can’t do that. He’s a cowboy. That’s all he knows. That’s all he wants. He doesn’t understand this new world.

His father Ace Bonner (Robert Preston) is a cowboy as well. Curly has just sold Ace’s land out from under him. He gave Ace a measly fifteen grand. Ace proceeded to blow the money on gambling and good-time girls. He has no regrets. That’s what money is for. Now Ace has a dream of going to Australia to prospect for gold. He speaks of Australia as if it’s some fabulous fabled land where there is still a frontier.  The gold rush in Australia had ended more than a century earlier but Ace doesn’t believe it.

A lot of critics just didn’t get this movie. They complained that nothing happens. While it’s true that there’s very little plot that’s not the point of the movie. I thought it was a bit existentialist. We have here a group of characters trying to come to terms with their lives and figure out if those lives actually mean anything.

Does Junior actually learn anything? The answer is, yes and no. But the important thing is that life hasn’t beaten him. Maybe it will beat him, but not today. Maybe that’s all any of us can hope for. Maybe it’s enough.

It’s no surprise that this movie was a box-office flop. It’s not an action movie. There is no violence. It’s not what people expected from Peckinpah (or McQueen). But it is a superb deeply personal movie and it’s one of Peckinpah’s two greatest movies (the other being the spectacularly misunderstood Straw Dogs).

It’s also McQueen’s best-ever performance. His portrayal of Junior is subtle, sensitive and intelligent.

Robert Preston had ludicrous amounts of charisma and it’s a joy to watch him in full flight here. Joe Don Baker is excellent, as is Ida Lupino as Ace’s wife Elvira. She loves both Ace and Junior but cannot see any way to help them.

There aren’t any villains. Even Curly isn’t a villain. He’s adapted to reality. Maybe he should have given Ace more than fifteen grand for his land but Curly figured that if he’d given him thirty grand Ace would simply have blown the lot on gambling and ladies of the night. And Curly’s assessment was undoubtedly correct. Curly isn’t going to let his father starve but Curly is the only grown-up in the family. He has to be responsible about money, even if it means looking heartless.

Ace and Junior are both losers, if you look at it one way. If you look at it another way they’re living their lives the way they want to, so they aren’t losers. Maybe the way they’re living can’t last, but nothing lasts. Maybe enjoying life while you can isn’t such a bad idea. These people, including Elvira, neither need nor want anybody’s pity. Ace is too old to ride bulls but he can still drink whiskey and chase girls (and sometimes catch them). As long as a man can do that life is good. Junior is broke and probably always will be but he has his convertible and his horse and he can’t think of anything else a man could want. And he can still chase girls as well.

There’s emotion in this movie but no cheap sentimentality. It treats its characters with too much respect to mock or pity them. It’s actually not a depressing movie. You think it’s going to be, but it isn’t.

Junior Bonner is an unassuming low-key masterpiece. Very highly recommended.

The Great Train Robbery (1978)

The Great Train Robbery was written and directed by Michael Crichton, based on his own novel. It was shot in England and financed by Dino de Laurentiis. It’s a heist movie set in 1855.

Crichton had become obsessed with Victorian England and also with the question of the origins and nature of criminal underworlds. He had also come across a factual account of an attempted robbery which had been the first of its type and which was the inspiration for Crichton’s novel.

Crichton’s story concerns an attempt to rob a moving train - a feat considered at the time to be impossible. The target is a very large shipment of gold, gold which will be used to pay British troops fighting in the Crimean War.

The gold will be in a safe which requires four keys and the keys are in the custody of three  separate bank and railway officials. The first essential step is to steal those keys.

An apparently respectable but actually very shady businessman named Pierce (Sean Connery) believes the gold could be stolen and he intends to steal it. 

His chief accomplice is Agar (Donald Sutherland), a brilliant pickpocket and lock specialist.

And he has his girlfriend Miriam (Lesley-Anne Down) whose very considerable powers of seduction will be very useful.

As in most heist stories there’s a long lead-up to the robbery but that’s no problem here because the gang has to carry out a whole of series of impossibly difficult and daring preliminary crimes.

And the heist itself is immense fun.

Crichton was famous for his techno-thrillers but what makes The Great Train Robbery so interesting is that he approaches it the same way - meticulous research and an amazing ability to make painstaking attention to detail of absorbing interest.

And with his keen interest in Victorian criminality Crichton would have been aware of the challenges facing the police. In the days before central databases and fingerprinting establishing a criminal’s identity could be tricky. Forensic science did not exist. And without international telegraphy if a criminal could get out of England he could disappear very easily and very completely. The police of course had informants but they more or less had to catch criminals in the act. So if Pierce and his gang can penetrate the security surrounding the gold shipment and get hold of the gold they might then be very hard to track down.

Connery oozes charisma and plays his part with a twinkle in his eye which is absolutely the right approach. And lighthearted adventure was something Donald Sutherland did extremely well. Connery and Sutherland make a delightful pair of rogues. And Lesley-Anne Down makes a fine Sexy Lady Rogue.

While the aim was always to get a PG-13 rating what I do like is that Crichton gives the film a delightful feel of Victorian bawdiness. There’s some extraordinarily risque dialogue  laced with delicious double-entendres. The brothel scene and Miriam’s seduction scene are naughty in a very Victorian way. It’s also obvious that Miriam is an ex-whore but this is suggested rather than stated.

The movie was well received by critics with the one criticism being the pacing but listening to Crichton’s audio commentary it’s clear that this was deliberate - he wanted that more leisurely Victorian pacing rather than 1970s pacing. And he was right. 

And it’s never boring. There’s fine suspense and the action sequences are superb. The budget was tight but it looks great and the period details are a joy. It has a fine old-fashioned rollicking adventure yarn feel.

The Great Train Robbery is immense amounts of fun. Highly recommended.

The main extra is an excellent audio commentary recorded by Michael Crichton in 1996.

The Only Game in Town (1970)

The Only Game in Town is a melodrama with some romantic comedy touches released by 20th Century Fox in 1970. It stars Elizabeth Taylor and Warren Beatty.

Fran Walker (Elizabeth Taylor) is a dancer in Vegas. She walks into a piano bar and gets chatted up by the piano player, Joe Grady (Warren Beatty). She’s lonely and they sleep together.

Each of them has a problem. Joe’s problem is gambling. He claims to have it under control. As soon as he has saved five thousand dollars he’s getting out of Vegas. But Joe is a gambler and while he can save money he can’t stop himself from gambling it away. For Joe getting out of Vegas is one of those things that seems like it’s just never going to happen.

Fran’s problem is her boyfriend Tom. He’s married. For five years he’s been promising Fran that he’ll divorce his wife and marry her. She’s given Tom an ultimatum, the latest of many. She hasn’t seen him for three months. For Fran marrying Tom is one of those things that seems like it’s just never going to happen.

Joe moves in with Fran. There’s no commitment. Each of them can just walk out of the relationship at any time. It’s not like it’s a big love affair. And they can’t make a commitment because any day now Joe will have that five grand and he’ll be off to New York, and any day now Tom will walk in and put an engagement ring on Fran’s finger.

Neither of them is going to admit to having fallen in love.

That’s pretty much the plot. The relationship is interesting and complex. We are told that Fran is three years older than Joe and in fact Taylor at 38 was a few years older than Beatty and that age difference is crucial to the story. Fran is obviously flattered that a good-looking younger man wants to get her into bed. Joe is an irresponsible overgrown boy. Fran finds herself mothering him. Joe is trying to deal with the fact that he’s found a woman he actually cares about.

Fran is desperately afraid of loneliness and she’s at the age where she can’t waste too much time on casual relationships. She’s afraid of losing Joe but she’s afraid of getting hurt if she makes a commitment. They both have some growing up to do.

I like the two central performances a great deal and the two leads have real chemistry. They play off each other amusingly and charmingly. They’re playing characters with very human weaknesses but Taylor and Beatty both make their characters sympathetic and likeable even when they’re doing exasperatingly foolish things.

The Only Game in Town was a spectacular box-office flop and ended the career of George Stevens as a director.

A large part of the problem is that this was 1970. Critics were wildly excited by the New American Cinema and by a new wave of young directors and stars who were going to revolutionise American movies. In the previous year Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy came out. By comparison The Only Game in Town seemed very old-fashioned. George Stevens had been directing movies since 1933. This seemed like a movie that represented the glitz and glamour of 1950s Hollywood, the kind of old school movie that the New American Cinema was going to consign to the trash can.

Even worse, it has a definite 1950s melodrama feel. It has that 1950s major studio production polish. And critics had turned against Elizabeth Taylor. The whole Burton-Taylor celebrity circus thing hurt her career a good deal. In 1970 The Only Game in Town was inevitably going to be savaged by critics and ignored by the public.

Also counting against it was a hugely inflated budget. This should have been a modestly budgeted low-key intimate movie and as such would probably at least have broken even.

But classic movie fans today are less likely to be bothered by this movie’s old-fashioned feel. They’re more likely to see that as a plus. And old-fashioned melodramas have quite a following today.

Had this movie been released in the early 60s, around the time that movies like The World of Suzie Wong and Butterfield 8 were being made and Hollywood was tentatively moving towards grown-up movies about human relationships The Only Game in Town would probably have been hailed by critics as bold and daring. Timing is everything and the timing was wrong for this film in 1970.

It has to be said that Miss Taylor’s costumes are a major disaster and may have contributed to the dismissive attitudes towards the film.

I enjoyed The Only Game in Town. I’m going to recommend it.

Family Plot (1976)

Family Plot, released in 1976, was Alfred Hitchcock’s final movie. This is definitely Hitchcock Lite, but that does not mean it’s a lesser Hitchcock movie. Some of Hitch’s cleverest and most delightful movies can be thought of as Hitchcock Lite, obvious examples being Young and Innocent and The Trouble with Harry. And of course To Catch a Thief. When I say these movies are Hitchcock Lite I mean that they were intended as lighthearted feelgood entertainment. I like feelgood entertainment if it’s done well, and Hitch did it extremely well.

There are Hitchcock fans who wish that his final movie had been something more in the style of his previous movie Frenzy. But it was not to be, and I think Family Plot was Hitchcock going out on a fairly high note.

Family Plot is essentially a comedic caper movie but the movie it most resembles in tone is The Trouble with Harry. That movie had been a flop because it was at least a decade ahead of its time. It was pure comedy, but it was black comedy. Neither audiences nor critics were ready to embrace such a concept in 1955. By 1976 however audiences were accustomed to black comedy and Family Plot was quite well received by both audiences and critics. By that time they had caught up with Hitchcock.

There are two entirely separate plot strands involving two contrasting criminal couples. We can see early on how the two plot strands are going to intersect and knowing this adds to the fun.

Blanche Tyler (Barbara Harris) is a phoney psychic. Her boyfriend, cab driver, George Lumley (Bruce Dern) helps her out by digging up background details on her clients to help her to convince them that her psychic powers are real. Now they’re hoping for a big score. Mrs Julia Rainbird (Cathleen Nesbitt) is an old lady with a guilty conscience. Thank to her her nephew missed out on his inheritance. And the Rainbird Estate is worth many millions of dollars. If Blanche and George can produce that long-lost nephew Mrs Rainbird will give them a large cheque.

Fran (Karen Black) and Arthur (William Devane) operate on a whole different level. Thy have just pulled off a kidnapping and collected a million dollar ransom.

Blanche and George are not really particularly dishonest or immoral. They really do intend to find Mrs Rainbird’s nephew and it never crosses their minds to try to substitute a phoney nephew. They don’t do that because it would be out of character for them. It would be immoral and cruel. They are just not cruel people and in their own way they have a sense of fair play. They intend to produce the genuine article. They are very much small time. Their score, if it comes off, will amount to a $10,000 cheque from Mrs Rainbird. And they will make an old lady very happy. It’s also significant that they are amateurs and they’re working class.

Fran and Arthur are big time and they’re ice-cold professional criminals. They’re smooth and sophisticated middle crass crooks. They don’t have the ethical qualms that Blanche and George have. I don’t think Hitch had any intention of making a political statement about class - it just adds extra flavour to make the two couples so very different in every way.

What links these two couples was something that happened a long time ago. We, the audience, know all about it. The fact that the protagonists don’t know this crucial fact leads them to make absurd and mistaken decisions. They have no way of knowing that their decisions are absurd and mistaken. That not only adds to the fun, it creates the suspense.

William Devane as Arthur is great fun. He’s not so much a psycho as an old-fashioned scoundrel. A Victorian melodrama villain for the audience to boo and hiss. Karen Black looks like a classic Dangerous Dame.

Bruce Dern had been around for a long time mostly doing B-movies or playing heavies and misfits. This gives him a rare opportunity to strut his stuff as a comic actor and he makes the most of it. He gets so much mileage out of that pipe. George is no genius but he really is a nice guy.

But the movie belongs to Barbara Harris. She does the phoney medium bit to perfection She’s funny and adorable.

We can’t help really liking George and Blanche. They’re only mildly dishonest but really they’re pretty nice and they love each other.

Technically Hitch is in complete command. The film is full of neat little Hitchcock moments. And the highway scene with the car is the sort of thing he’s done before but he manages to make it feel totally fresh, and it delightfully combines whimsy and terror (which is of course very Hitchcockian).

It’s a movie with real charm and wit and a lightness of touch and I manages to be very 1970s as well. This is not a movie made by a tired old man who had lost his touch. It’s a movie made by a man who still had enormous enthusiasm and style.

Family Plot is based on Victor Canning’s novel, The Rainbird Pattern. Canning was one of my favourite thriller writers and a lot of his novels were filmed. He’s not as well known today as he should be. I’ve reviewed his novels The Golden Salamander, Panther’s Moon and Castle Minerva all of which I recommend.

Ernest Lehman wrote the screenplay, having previously written North by Northwest for Hitchcock.

Family Plot is just splendid entertainment. Highly recommended.

It looks great on Blu-Ray.

The Stone Killer (1973)

The Stone Killer, released in 1973, was third of the six films directed by Michael Winner that starred Charles Bronson.

Bronson had been around for a very long time and had been a minor presence in 1950s TV (including the lead role in the interesting Man with a Camera series). He seemed destined never to be a major star. He just didn’t have movie star good looks. He had a fact that looked like it had been kicked around a football field. He lacked obvious movie star charm. It was Michael Winner who realised that Bronson really did have star quality, albeit unconventional star quality. And he had a very masculine brand of charisma. There were other movie tough guys but Bronson was just a whole lot tougher.

The Stone Killer can be considered to be part of a wave of movies set against a background of seemingly out-of-control urban violent crime but it is important to point out that unlike the next Winner-Bronson movie, Death Wish, this is not a vigilante movie. The character played by Bronson, Lieutenant Lou Torrey, is a cop. Having become somewhat controversial he accepts an offer to move over to the the west coast but in L.A. he is still cop. He is now a Detective-Lieutenant in the LAPD.

While his methods are ruthless and sometimes unconventional and while he has major disagreements with senior officers over his current case he does at all times act with the knowledge of, and the approval of, his immediate superior Captain of Detectives Les Daniels (Norman Fell). He is not a rogue cop.

And the shooting which upset his superiors at the beginning of the story was justified. The punk, who had already shot a cop, pulled a gun and pointed it directly at him. Lou Torrey blew the punk away, which is what a cop is going to do in such a situation.

Over-sensitive critics at the time (and today) were very upset by movies like this one and Dirty Harry and Death Wish which did not conform to the politically acceptable line that it’s the violent criminals who are the real victims. And some over-sensitive viewers will be clutching their pearls at many points during the film.

The case gets moving when Armitage, a burnt-out hitman facing a drugs charge, offers Lou information that a major hit is going to go down soon. That’s all that Lou finds out. It’s an essential ingredient of the plot that although the audience knows what’s going on the cops initially do not have a clue. But it is obvious that it’s not just some businessman hiring a hitman to kill an inconvenient business partner. Armitage had been a senior Mob trigger man. And whoever is behind this hit soon demonstrates a willingness to kill anyone who might conceivably spill the beans to the cops. And they’re sufficiently well organised to kill people in police custody. It has to be something big.

Now this was the 70s, when left-wing urban terrorism was a big thing in the U.S. (and in Europe as well). So when the police top brass jump to the conclusion that whatever is going to go down is likely to be political that’s not an implausible conclusion. But Lou Torrey doesn’t buy it, and he’s right.

The audience knows what is going on. It’s wild and crazy but Winner was trying to make a movie that would be a manic adrenalin-charged exercise in frenetic action and large-scale mayhem and that wild premise is perfect for such purposes.

And this movie really delivers on the mayhem front. It’s like a full-scale war. And the action scenes are terrific. And the momentum just keeps building as Torrey slowly starts to realise the sheer scale and insanity of the crime, and as the momentum builds it gets more manic and deranged.

There’s also Lou’s amusing encounter with the hippies at the ashram. It’s a swipe at the counter-culture but I enjoyed it.

Bronson is excellent. Lou Torrey isn’t a vigilante or a maverick cop as such but he is a force of nature. He’s an effective cop because he’s unstoppable.

Norman Fell was always good in these kinds of roles. I can’t tell you anything about the character played by Martin Balsam but he’s very good.

Michael Winner really pushes the buttons of many critics and film scholars. Their disapproval of the subject matter of films like Death Wish makes them unable to admit that maybe the guy actually knew how to direct movies and that maybe his films were successful because they were actually entertaining.

The highlight of the Blu-Ray extras is an audio recording of a lecture given by Michael Winner in 1970. He really was a very funny man and he wasn’t afraid of being provocative and he’s a joy to listen to.

The Stone Killer promises action and mayhem and it delivers the good. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed Winner’s extremely interesting 1964 film The System (one of six he did with Oliver Reed). And I’ve reviewed his much misunderstood Death Wish (1974), his superb The Mechanic (1972) and his very underrated spy thriller Scorpio (1973).

The Anderson Tapes (1971)

The Anderson Tapes is a 1971 Sidney Lumet movie and the fact that I generally dislike Lumet’s movies put me off seeing it for years.

On the other hand it’s a heist movie. And it’s a 70s paranoia movie. And it’s all about surveillance. These are all things I like a lot.

Robert Anderson (Sean Connery), known as Duke, has been in prison for ten years. That will prove be significant. He’s known as a very skilled and professional safe-cracker but the world has changed in ten years. Duke doesn’t really understand the ramifications of new technology for his kind of old school criminal.

He has a plan to rob an apartment building. There are six apartments, all inhabited by very rich people with all sorts of valuables - cash, negotiable bonds, jewels, paintings, objets d’art, coin collections.

He needs financing to set his scheme up and he gets it from the Mob. A very big Mob boss owes him a debt of honour.

There’s another ticklish complication. A little task that the Mob wants him to do for them.

Anderson puts together a team. The heist is intricately planned and it’s a good plan. There’s one problem. The authorities have Anderson and everyone else involved under surveillance. Not just one government agency, but a whole bunch of them - the narcotics bureau, the FBI, even the IRS. They’ve been under surveillance right from the start. Every movie they’ve made has been taped, photographed and filmed.

This is a movie in which everyone is being watched all the time. This was 1971, when the surveillance state was still in its infancy, but this movie is already taking a deep dive into tech paranoia.

The usual formula for a heist movie is that a master criminal comes up with a plan, we see the detailed planning and the rehearsals and then when the plan is finally put into operation something inevitably goes wrong. In this movie everything has already gone wrong right from the start.

When we come to the heist Lumet gets a tad tricky, with the narrative jumping back and forward between the present and the future. It’s a bit risky but he pulls it off rather well.

One very cool thing about this movie is that it features so much incredibly cool analog technology that was absolutely cutting edge in 1971. The Feds even have a super-computer, with punch cards and flashing lights just like a proper computer. And ham radio plays a key role, which is amazingly cool.

Connery gives a standard Connery performance but that’s OK because that standard Connery performance is always fun to watch. And he did tweak that standard performance for different films. In this one he lacks Bond’s charm and humour.

Dyan Cannon is quite good as his girlfriend. Christopher Walken, in his first significant feature film role, is good as a young crim befriended by Anderson in prison. Martin Balsam is there as well, as reliable as ever. Ralph Meeker is a riot as an uber-tough cop.

The heist itself occupies a very large chunk of the running time and it’s superbly done. There are only occasional moments of violence and that’s why they work and why they hit hard. Suddenly it’s not a game. And suddenly the guys who thought they had everything under control realise they’ve been fooling themselves.

The Anderson Tapes is a fine exercise in suspense and paranoia. This is easily the best move I’ve ever seen from Lumet. Highly recommended.

This movie is paired with Physical Evidence on a double-header Blu-Ray from Mill Creek. There are no extras but it looks terrific.

Fat City (1972)

John Huston’s career had been in both the commercial and critical doldrums for years when he made Fat City in 1972. It was a surprise commercial hit and critics loved it. It put Huston back on top. Three years later Huston would make the best movie of his career, The Man Who Would Be King (1975).

Fat City is 1970s bleakness at its bleakest. This is nihilism without a trace of hope. The only movie of this period that can match it for bleakness is They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? but in that film the characters are driven to despair by economic desperation. It is set at the worst point of the Depression.

But Fat City is set in 1972. The 70s economic crisis was grim but it didn’t start until the Oil Crisis of late 1973. In 1972 the economy was going fine. If you were a loser in 1972 you couldn’t blame the economy. The characters in this movie are all losers and it’s all their own work.

The setting is Stockton, California. Huston and his cinematographer Conrad Hall make it look like an annexe of Hell. Everything is decaying, squalid, depressing and ugly.

Billy Tully (Stacy Keach) is a washed-out prizefighter. He was never much good but now at 30 he’s trying to make a comeback. In a gym he spars with 18-year-old Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges). Billy thinks the kid has promise. He introduces him to his manager, Ruben Luna (Nicholas Colasanto). Ernie is on his way.

But he isn’t really. He’s on his way in the world of third-rate semi-pro boxing. In this world if you win you still lose. Billy never even had a sniff at a title fight. He would always have remained in the sleazy desperate lower echelons of the fight game. He made some money for a while until he got so badly pummelled in a fight that he lost his mojo. If he makes a comeback he’ll be fighting for pitifully small purses in fleapit stadiums until inevitably he’ll get pummelled again and will end as another punch-drunk wreck. He just isn’t smart enough to avoid such a fate.

Ernie has some talent, but not enough. Not enough to get him anywhere near a championship fight. At best he will eke out a living until eventually he gets his brain turned to mush, just like all the other failed fighters. Ernie is also not smart enough to avoid such a fate.

And while Billy looks up to Ruben it’s an illusion. Ruben is the third-rate manager of a string of third-rate boxers. Ruben doesn’t have the training skills or the business acumen to develop anything but third-rate fighters. Ruben is a loser as well.

Billy drifts into a relationship with Oma (Susan Tyrrell), a broken-down self-pitying drunk. She has had three marriages. They all failed. It has never occurred to Oma that this might have been her fault. It has never occurred to Oma that anything has ever been her fault.

When we first see Oma we assume she’s around 40. But Susan Tyrrell was 26 at the time and I suspect Huston deliberately chose a young actress. If you look closely at Oma you can see that she isn’t 40, she’s a young woman who has let herself go to an extraordinary degree. Oma is the last woman in the world that Billy should get mixed up with, and Billy is last man in the world that Oma should become involved with. We know that the relationship will just make things worse for both of them but they’re both incapable of making good decisions.

Meanwhile Ernie has met Faye (Candy Clark). Very soon she has trapped him into marriage by deliberately becoming pregnant. She thinks it’s a clever move but they’re both too young and irresponsible for marriage and Ernie is in no financial position to support a wife and child. We know that the marriage will ruin both their lives, but they’re too dumb to know any better.

For me the weakness of this movie is that I found it difficult to care about people so determined to remain losers. They’re too dumb and too self-pitying to care about. But maybe that’s just me.

The performances are all effective.

There are two major boxing scenes and Huston does some clever misdirection in each of them. In one there’s some obvious foreshadowing but it doesn’t play out quite as he’s led us to believe it will. In the other we’re led to expect a particular result because that’s the way other boxing movies would play it but Huston pulls the rug from under us.

The ending is interesting. I saw it one way, others see it another way.

I didn’t exactly enjoy this movie but if you’re prepared to join Huston in a deep dive into despair and misery you can admire the skill with which he conducts us on that dive. Recommended, assuming you enjoy watching awful things happen to hopeless people.

Donkey Skin (1970)

Donkey Skin is a 1970 fairy tale adaptation written and directed by Jacques Demy. The original French title of the film is Peau d’âne. It was released in English-speaking markets with a variety of different titles including Once Upon a Time and The Magic Donkey. Demy emerged as a director at the time when the Nouvelle Vague or New Wave was becoming a thing in French cinema. Demy’s movies do not however feel very much like the contemporary movies of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut.

Demy is best-known for Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 1964) and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort). Demy took a decidedly offbeat approach to the musical genre. Rather than actual songs there is dialogue which is sung, by actors and actresses who are not actual singers. It’s sounds like a catastrophically bad idea but weirdly it works and these two movies were international hits.

He uses a similar approach in Donkey Skin.

Donkey Skin is based on the fairy tale Donkeyskin, from Charles Perrault’s 1697 fairy tale collection which contained the original versions of so many of the most famous fairy tales.

Jean Marais plays the king and he is the happiest king of the happiest kingdom in the world. His queen is the most beautiful queen in the world, and they have a lovely charming daughter (played by Catherine Deneuve).

Then disaster strikes. The queen dies. On her deathbed she forces the king to promise that he will remarry (for the kingdom’s sake he needs a male heir) but only if he can find a princess more beautiful than his dying queen.

There is no princess in all the world who would qualify. None, except one. His daughter.

The king decides that therefore he should marry her.

The princess decides that maybe she likes this idea.

At this point her fairy godmother, the Lilac Fairy (Delphine Seyrig), decides that she needs to take steps to prevent this marriage. She suggests that the princess should stall by demanding impossible wedding presents, but the king manages to provide them. The Lilac Fairy then suggests that the princess should demand the skin of the king’s magic donkey.

Using the donkey skin to disguise her beauty the princess flees to a neighbouring kingdom. The young prince of that kingdom falls in love with her but then cannot recognise he. But he has her ring. No-one else can wear that ring, so if he finds a maiden who can wear it then he has found his princess.

There are a lot of things to like about this movie. The visuals are gorgeous and they’re gorgeous in interesting ways.

I like the fact that Demy does not succumb to the temptation to add an anachronistic modern political subtext.

I like the fact that he was not tempted to transpose the story to a more modern setting. This is a fairy tale world that mostly looks the way Charles Perrault’s readers in 1697 would have imagined it.

There are some clever moments referencing various poets and filmmaker, such as Cocteau.

But there are things that, for me, just don’t work. Having some of the dialogue sung is a gimmick he’d used before. It’s a gimmick that left me cold.

The big problem is that for all the visual splendours, it’s just a bit lifeless. The characters have all the vitality of wooden dolls. Perhaps, given his association with the New Wave, Demy was deliberately aiming for this and for extreme emotional distance. It doesn’t work for me.

And I hate to say this since I’m a fan of hers but Catherine Deneuve’s performance is a major weakness. She’s flat, lifeless, cold and charmless.

Before making this movie Demy should have sat down and watched Ernst Lubitch’s early masterpieces such as The Doll (Die Puppe, 1919) and The Wildcat (1921). Lubitsch shows how it should be done. Storybook characters come to life, but Lubitsch actually does bring them to life.

Donkey Skin does have some striking images but for me it was a movie to admire rather than a movie to love. There is however enough of interest here to make it worth a watch. Recommended.

Ransom (1974)

Ransom (AKA The Terrorists) is a 1974 British thriller. It was shot in Norway but apparently it was felt that it was best to make the setting a mythical Scandinavian country called Scandinavia. It had a Finnish director (Casper Wrede) and a Swedish cinematographer (Sven Nykvist) but an entirely British cast headed up by Sean Connery. It’s a largely forgotten movie but it’s at least moderately effective.

It’s a hijacking hostage drama made at a time when hijackings and terrorist outrages were regular occurrences.

A British terrorist named Shepherd, along with several of his cohorts, has kidnapped the British ambassador to Scandinavia. They are demanding the release by the British Government of other members of the terrorist gang currently in custody. The British Government intends to accede to Shepherd’s demands but there’s a complication. Other members of this terrorist gang, led by Petrie (Ian McShane), have hijacked a Scandinavian airliner. They are demanding free passage for Shepherd and his accomplices to the airport so that they can all make their escape by air to destinations unknown.

So the hijacking comes under Scandinavian jurisdiction and the Scandinavians intend to accept the terrorists’ demands but double-cross them.

The task of apprehending all of these terrorists without risking any civilian casualties is handed to the Scandinavian chief of security, Colonel Tahlvik (Sean Connery). He thinks that his task is impossible but he’s a soldier and he intends to do the best he can and he most definitely does not like the idea of letting terrorists get away with outrages on Scandinavian soil.

It’s a double hostage drama, with two sets of hostages held in different locations.

The plot gets complicated but it’s perfectly coherent and includes some sound ideas.

There is of course a major twist and it’s signposted by subtle clues scattered throughout the movie. It’s still a pretty decent twist.

Connery as usual exudes charisma.

It should have turned out better than it did. The potential was there. It ends up feeling a bit too much like a TV-movie.

One major problem is that Colonel Tahlvik is the only interesting character. We don’t get any insights into the motivations of Shepherd and Petrie and they’re just not sufficiently menacing. This is a movie that really needed a memorable villain to provide a worthy adversary for Tahlvik, and he needed to be played by an actor with enough charisma not to get totally overshadowed by Connery.

Ian McShane is in fact a fine actor but his performance fails to build up enough steam. He just doesn’t seem to be fully engaged.

John Quentin as Shepherd is a total washout and that is a major weakness.

Most of the movie’s problems would seem to have stemmed from the fact that as director of an action/suspense thriller Casper Wrede was just not up to the job. The action scenes are not exciting enough, the suspense doesn’t build the way it should and there’s a general lack of energy and urgency.

There is some 70s cynicism but it needed to be given a bit more bite.

Visually it’s a fairly impressive film.

This is not by any means a bad movie. It’s decent entertainment but in a TV-movie time-killer sort of way rather than in a nail-biting adrenalin-fuelled feature film sort of way. Worth a look if you can pick it up really cheap or if you’re a Sean Connery completist.

Network’s Blu-Ray lacks extras but looks very good.